The Force ~ A Good Read

Are you looking for a good read to curl up with over the holidays? Maybe a great gift idea for the Christian thriller fan in your life? The Force by Alexandra and Joyce Swann may just fill that need.

The Book

The Forceis a newly released 350 page read from Alexandra and Joyce Swann. It would definitely fall in the category of a Christian thriller and/or mystery. There is no doubt after reading just a few pages of this book that it is dominated by suspense. It is the continuation of the story line begun in The Fourth Kingdom, but you can certainly enjoy this read without having read its prequel.

The story opens with Josh and Jarrod Sinclair being asked to consult on an FBI case that appears to be a serial murder of some of the most beautiful women in the world. The kicker is that some of these women have already been dead for years. How can they now be the victims of new murder investigations? Retired detective Fred Kowalski is brought in to work with the Sinclair brothers. Their investigation soon leads them outside US borders and across the Atlantic to Dubai. What will they find? That I can not share, but you will soon see that there is a much greater force at work. Can the Sinclairs aand Kowalski get to the bottom of what initially appears to be murder, cloning, and human trafficking before this Force takes control of the entire human race?

The Authors

Alexandra and Joyce Swann are a mother and daughter writing team that have authored The Fourth Kingdom, The Force, and also The Warrior, which is also now available on Kindle. Another title that you may also want to check out by these ladies is No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master’s Degree at Age Sixteen.

The authors were asked how they plan for a major book writing such as The Fourth Kingdom and The Force. Their response was:

Each one is different. In this case, this book is a sequel to The Fourth Kingdom, which we originally wrote in 1988. That book as inspired by a 60 minutes interview that Joyce saw of an elderly German national who was saying that the world needs a secular savior. That comment gave rise to the entire book.

The Fourth Kingdom was written about 10 years before the Left Behind Series. We sent it to a publisher (Harvest House) and they were reading it at the time that Dolly the sheep had just been released to the world. So it was very timely. The editors at Harvest House loved the first part of the book, which is now The Fourth Kingdom but at that time was called “The Doppelganger Experiment.” We had a completely different second half though, and there were serious creative differences about how that part should play out. So we held onto the book and waited.

Part of the impetus that drives Karl Helmick–the villain in The Fourth Kingdom, is the desire for racial and genetic purity. He wants to pick up where Hitler left off. That kind of purity is not achievable in the real world–it was not achievable in Hitler’s Third Reich. But he is trying to do with cloning what Hitler tried to do with his SS breeding program–create a master race.

In The Force, we take it one step further. Josef is profiteering from making copies of people–from famous long-dead starlets to loved ones who have died. And we take a look at what it would mean if you could scientifically resurrect a loved one. What would it mean to be able to get back that beloved spouse or child or parent who had died? We look at some of the issues that would be inherent to something like that. That is why the opening chapter with Peter Kessler is significant.

One of the questions we ask in the description of The Fourth Kingdom is “How Far Would You Go to Live Forever?” In The Force we continue that theme.

After the Read

The Force is truly one of those books that you can’t put down. The suspense that is constantly lingering keeps you anchored in wanting to read just a few more pages.

The book is written very much in the suspenseful tone of the Left Behind books by LaHaye or a Christian thriller like those by Dekker. The difference that I found that kept me so riveted was the scary reality that this could happen in our world today. It reveals the true depravity of man and just how far our evil side can take us if completely turned over to the dark forces of this world. The timeframe for the story is close to current day which also adds to the realism of the plot and issues being addressed. The parallels between this work and the technological, scientific, and political activity of our world today are alarming. My lightbulb was really glowing brighter as to what could happen if our world today turned itself further and further away from our Savior and over to the forces of this world.

This book could be considered within the realm of Bible prophecy, not because it focuses on the return of Christ, but rather the types of developments we will see in our world as we move farther and farther into the darkness of sin prior to His Second Coming.

Availability

The Force is available through Amazon. The paperback copy retails for $12.76, while you can purchase the Kindle edition for $4.99 at the time of this writing. It would make a great Christmas present for anyone that enjoys a great Christian thriller.